Which th' elder finding ready built to hand,
Their genius please

In sloth and ease,

Or waste, in pride and riot, goods and land."

Two elegies are added on the deaths of Edmund Alleyn, Esq. of Hatfield in Essex, (son and heir to Sir Edward Alleyn, Bart.) and Mary his wife.

T. P.

ART. CLXI. Eccho, or the Infortunate Lovers, a poem, by James Sherley, Cant. in Art. Bacc. Lond. 1618. 8vo.

Primum hunc Arethusa, nihi concede laborem.

FROM a MS. note to Astle's copy of Wood's Athenæ. The first date to any of Shirley's works, in Wood, is 1629.. Wood says, he went from Oxford to Cambridge, where he presumes he took the degrees in Arts. He died 1666.

ART. CLXII. Poems, &c. by James Shirley. Sine aliquâ dementia nullus Phoebus.

London: Printed for Humphrey Mosely, and are to be sold at his shop at the signe of the Princes' Armes in St. Paul's Church yard. 1646. 12mo. pp. 80.

Narcissus, or the Self-Lover. By James Shirley. Hæc Olim. London (as before) 1646. 12mo. pp. 54.

THE history of JAMES SHIRLEY, a fertile dramatic writer, is well known.

These poems are dedicated to Bernard Hyde, Esq. and have commendatory verses by Tho. Stanley, Tho. May, Geo. Bucke, Fra. Tuckyr, Ed. Powel; and two by Geo. Hill, the former in Latin. Two or three specimens will be sufficient.

"Presenting his Mistress with a Bird.

Walking to taste the welcome Spring,
The birds, which chearful notes did sing
On their green perches; 'mong the rest,
One whose sweet warble pleased me best;
I tempted to the snare, and caught;

To you
"Tis young, and apt to learn! and near
A voice so full of art, and clear

I sent it to be taught;

As your's, it cannot choose, but rise

Quickly a bird of Paradise."

"The Passing Bell.*

Hark, how chimes the passing bell!
There's no music to a knell;

All the other sounds, we hear,
Flatter, and but cheat our ear.
This doth put us still in mind,
That our flesh must be resign'd;
And a general silence made;
The world be muffled in a shade!
He, that on a pillow lies,
Tear-embalm❜'d before he dies,
Carries, like a sheep, his life,
To meet the sacrificer's knife;
And for eternity is prest,

Sad bell-weather to the rest."

The poem of Narcissus consists of 131 six-lined

"Fair Echo, rise! sick-thoughted nymph, awake: Leave thy green couch, and canopy of trees! Long since the quiristers of the wood did shake Their wings, and sing to the bright sun's uprise: 'Day hath wept o'er thy couch, and, progressed, Blusheth to see fair Echo still in bed.

2.

If not the birds, who 'bout the coverts fly,

And with their warbles charm the neighbouring air; If not the sun, whose new embroidery

Makes rich the leaves, that in thy arbours are, Can make thee rise; yet, lovesick nymph, away! Thy young Narcissus is abroad to day.

3.

Pursue him, timorous maid; he moves apace;
Favonius waits to play with thy loose hair,

And help thy flight; see, how the drooping grass

Courts thy soft tread, thou child of sound and air;

Attempt, and overtake him; though he be

Coy to all other nymphs, he'll stoop to thee.

4.

If thy face move not, let thy eyes express

Some rhetoric of thy tears to make him stay;

He must be a rock, that will not melt at these,
Dropping these native diamonds in his way;

By the motto Hæc Olim, it is probable this is the same poem, as was originally published under the title of Echo, or the Infortunate Lovers, 1618, 8vo. See the preceding article.

Mistaken he may stoop at them, and this,
Who knows how soon? may help thee to a kiss.

6..

If neither love, thy beauty, nor thy tears

Invent some other way to make him know
He need not hunt, that can have such a deer;
The Queen of Love did once Adonis woo;
But hard of soul, with no persuasions won,
He felt the curse of his disdain too soon.

7.

In vain I counsel her to put on wing;
Echo hath left her solitary grove;
And in a vale, the palace of the spring,

Sits silently attending to her love; But round about, to catch his voice with care, every shade and tree she hid a snare.

In

8..

Now do the huntsmen fill the air with noise,
And their shrill horns chafe her delighted ear,
Which with loud accents give the woods a voice,
Proclaiming parly to the fearful deer:
She hears the jolly tunes; but every strain,
As high and musical she returns again.

9.

Rous'd is the game; pursuit doth put on wings; The sun doth shine, and gild them out their way: The deer into an o'ergrown thicket springs,

Through which he quaintly steals his shine away; The hunters scatter; but the boy, o'erthrown, In a dark part of the wood complains alone.

10.

Him, Echo, led by her affections, found,
Joy'd, you may guess, to reach him with her eye;
But more, to see him rise without a wound,

Who yet obscures herself behind some tree:
He, vext, exclaims, and asking "Where am I?'
The unseen virgin answers, 'Here am I!'

11.

'Some Guide from hence! will no man hear?' he cries:

She answers in her passion, 'O man, hear!'

'I die, I die!' say both; and thus she tries
With frequent answers to entice his ear
And person to her court, more fit for love,
He tracts the sound, and finds her odorous grove.

12.

The way he trod, was paved with violets

Whose azure leaves do warm their naked stalks:
In their white double ruffs the daisies jet,
And primroses are scatter'd in the walks;
Whose pretty mixture in the ground declares
Another galaxy emboss'd with stars.

13.

Two rows of elms ran with proportion'd grace,
Like Nature's arras, to adorn thy sides.

The friendly vines their loved barks embrace,

While folding tops the chequer'd ground-work hides.

Here oft the tired sun himself would rest,

Riding his glorious circuit to the west.

14.

From hence delight conveys him unawares
Into a spacious green, whose either side